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This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2) Review

I have decided I will rate this book five stars because I don’t want to punish if for being the sequel to a favorite. That said, if the only way to evaluate this book was comparing it to John Dies #1 it would have an entirely different rating.

The Good Stuff:
This book continues to have a fun and engaging plot and voice. It is fully entertaining and. . . like I said, fun. It might sound shallow, but reading is supposed to be enjoyable, and this is a by-far enjoyable read. The writing is strong not because of flowery-prose but because the MC is pronounced. It is mostly written from David’s POV and that is not just indicated with pronouns but with the characterization of every description. I really respect that. When it shifts POV it isn’t so strong, which disappointed me, but I really did appreciate the character development of the other secondary characters. It was right on. I also thought a lot of the plot points in this story were very sharp. The author combines modern warfare tactics like drones with a supernatural apocalypse scenario which was very believable. He also combines modern technology and Internet hysteria in his discussion of the apocalypse. His contemporary discussions had to be a step ahead of the cliche because the cliche doesn’t live in the modern times. I appreciated this innovation.

The Bad Stuff:
It is mostly shallow, like an action movie. It is really entertaining and I love it for that but John Dies #1 had meat behind it and this book basically didn’t. There were some moments of this book where I stopped to think and philosophize but most of the time it was just meaningless action. It didn’t have the harsh bite that the first one had behind the plot. The nihilistic horror came up a couple of times and I loved those parts but they were segmented. It didn’t drive the story.

Also, besides being in the same universe and following the same absurd metaphysics, this book really isn’t a sequel. There were a lot of huge questions left unanswered in book one. On one hand, if all the questions were answered it would lose a lot of the horror. On the other, shouldn’t the confusions at least be addressed in the sequel? They didn’t even have to answer them. There was only one quick dialogue between [Carlos/Amy/Dave] that seemed to hint on the truth-about-Dave that was revealed in book one but it was really ambiguous and like three lines.